FOR EIGHT YEARS after Spontini’s Olimpie (1819), no significant new works were produced at the Paris Opéra.1 In 1828 occurred the first performance of Auber’s serious opera La Muette de Portici (also known as Masaniello, after the name of its hero). This was followed less than a year later by Rossini’s French opera, Guillaume Tell. In 1831 appeared Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, in 1835 Halévy’s La Juive, and the following year Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. These works established a type of musical drama that has come to be generally known under the name of grand opera. Before considering specific examples, let us attempt to define the essential features of this style.
The term grand opéra was originally used in contrast to opéra comique and involved the technical distinction already mentioned: in the former the musical numbers were connected by recitatives and in the latter by spoken dialogue. But the adjective “grand” also implied a serious subject of heroic nature, treated in grandiose proportions and employing the utmost resources of singing, orchestral music, and staging. Grand opera was in the line of descent from Lully, Rameau, Gluck, and Spontini, but in its most flourishing period—the 1830s and 1840s—the traditional features were infused with romantic conceptions in such a way as to give it a special character. Subjects were chosen not from classical antiquity but from medieval or modern history, with strong emphasis on local color and often with pointed application to contemporary issues (Guillaume Tell); religious motifs were introduced (Les Huguenots); and actions of violence and passion were favored (La Juive).2 Some parallels in the field of literature may be briefly indicated: the romantic treatment of religious themes by François Chateaubriand; the historical novels of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas père; and the romantic dramas of both Alexandre Dumas fils (Henri III et son cour, 1829) and Victor Hugo (Hernani, 1830; Le Roi s’amuse, 1832; Ruy Blas, 1838; Les Burgraves, 1843).
French grand opéra was the creation of four men: the director and entrepreneur Louis Véron (1798–1867), who reigned over the Paris Opéra from 1831 to 1835; the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), author of La Muette de Portici, La Juive, Robert le diable, and Les Huguenots; the stage designer Pierre Cicéri (1782–1868), whose historical accuracy for costumes and scenery set new standards for the period; and the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), in whose works all the best and worst features of grand opera were exemplified. The elements were already present, having been developed in French opera of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; they were combined under the stimulus of a commercial undertaking that had to pay its own way—and did so, with a little help from the government—by appealing to the haute bourgeoisie of Paris in the early days of Louis Philippe. Sheer spectacle, on a scale surpassing anything before attempted, was a basic ingredient in that appeal, but this was amply supported by the nature of the drama and music that went with it. Plots aiming to stimulate excitement through sudden, often grotesque, contrasts and shocks were well adapted for music and indeed required it for their full realization. Scores became longer and more complex than ever before in the history of opera. All kinds of novel orchestral effects were exploited. Ballets became larger and more elaborate. Choruses and crowd scenes abounded. The Mozartean ensemble, with its careful preservation of the individuality of each character, was transformed into a brilliant chorus for solo voices. Solo parts expanded in range, tone color, and expression; coloratura arias and impassioned dramatic outbursts appeared side by side with simple ballads and romances. Musical forms and idioms were mingled in a luxuriant eclecticism, the object being to dazzle popular audiences who demanded thrills and for whom the aristocratic restraints of the eighteenth century had no meaning. The inevitable consequence was an inflated style of “effects without causes,”3 of striking and brilliant musical numbers inadequately motivated by the dramatic situation. In short, composers and librettists acted on three principles that are still quite familiar: (1) give the public what it wants; (2) if a little is good, more is better; and (3) the whole (that is, the complete opera) is equal to the sum of its parts (namely, the several musical styles of which the opera is composed). The result, if one can judge from the fame and fortune of Scribe and his collaborators, was undeniably successful at the time and of considerable influence on the future course of opera.
Auber
For several decades the librettist Eugène Scribe dominated the theatrical scene in Paris with works that embraced a variety of genres from comedy to tragedy, from vaudeville to grand opera.4 Scribe’s first work for the Paris Opéra was La Muette de Portici (1828), a five-act libretto for which the music was composed by Daniei-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), in the style of grand opera.5 The plot is based on a historical event, the revolution at Naples in 1647, which was led by Masaniello, a fisherman; for good measure, another event—the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1631—is brought in at the climax of the opera. This historical framework, however, belies the immediacy of the political and social events portrayed on the stage. With no intention on Scribe’s part, La Muette nevertheless has the distinction of having triggered a revolution. A performance of the opera at Brussels on August 25, 1830, touched off the popular uprising that resulted the next year in the establishment of Belgium as an independent state. The Brussels audience undoubtedly was moved by the tragic finale of Act V, in which “good” does not triumph over “evil.” Masaniello and his sister, Fenella, the mute girl of the title, are caught between the extremes of the ruling faction and the revolutionary mob and become sacrificial victims. Masaniello, the hero, dies at the hands of the people he tried to free from political oppression. His death, in turn, causes Fenella to take her own life. In this unusual score, the heroine is a mute personage, who expresses herself only in pantomime to orchestral accompaniment—an interesting use of dance and the melodrama technique.6
Auber’s music is on a typical grand opéra scale, filled with choruses, crowd scenes, processions, ballets, and huge finales. There are a few lighter numbers for contrast, such as the barcarole in the finale of Act II and the vivacious marketplace chorus in Act III, but the mood is for the most part serious, pervaded with romantic enthusiasm, rising to patriotic fervor in the celebrated duet of Act II, “Mieux vaut mourir” (example 18.1). Incidentally, the accompaniment for this duet is a good specimen of the “military band” rhythm that was a common feature in many nineteenth-century operas: a steady four staccato chords per measure in march time, with a whang on the second beat at the cadences.
EXAMPLE 18.1 La Muette de Portici, Act II, no. 8
Rossini
In spite of its grandiose qualities, the music of La Muette seems appropriate to and justified by the libretto; Auber does not fall into the error of striving after effects merely for their own sake. The same observation holds for the next grand opera presented at the Opéra: Guillaume Tell (1829) by Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868). This opera exploits a similar patriotic-revolutionary theme—a people seeking a peaceful resolution to their quest for independence—in a spectacular, though dramatically weak, four-act arrangement of Schiller’s drama by Etienne Jouy, with emendations by Armand Marrast and Hippolyte Bis, and final revisions by the composer himself.7
Guillaume Tell was Rossini’s last opera.8 Its success was not great at first, but the work has remained in the repertoire almost to the present day, and the score, the masterpiece of one of the most original geniuses of nineteenth-century opera, has always held the respect of musicians. Admittedly, this opera is uneven in quality and, by modern standards, too long. Nevertheless, the overture has a vitality that years of playing by military bands has failed to quench. The first act is well planned to furnish contrast between the pastoral music at the beginning, in which Rossini employed many authentic alpine horn (Ranze des vaches) motifs, and the magnificent finale, ending with an exciting veloce movement in 3/4 rhythm. Act II is the most nearly perfect both in general arrangement and in the details: Mathilde’s recitative and aria “Sombres forêts,” the following duet, and above all the trio for men’s voices “Ces jours, qu’ils ont osé proscrire.” The third act contains long ballets, many dramatically effective choruses, and the too-often-parodied scene of the apple, here prefaced by a very moving aria (with a solo cello used at the outset) that Tell sings to his son before the shooting. The last act has long arid stretches, but they are relieved by occasional numbers of great beauty, such as the introduction, Arnold’s aria “Asile héréditaire,” the canonic trio for women’s voices “Je rends à votre amour” (very much like the canon in Fidelio), and the final hymn to freedom.
Halévy
One French grand opera that still holds the stage is La Juive (1835) by Jacques-François Fromental Elie Halévy (1799–1862), distinguished composer of some thirty-seven operas, of which the most successful, along with La Juive, were L’Éclair (1835) and La Reine de Chypre (1841).9 The longevity of La Juive is probably due to the fact that by making copious cuts it is possible to eliminate not only much of the repetition that was such a feature of grand opera but also many of the more commonplace melodies, thereby uncovering a score that, in originality of musical ideas, consistency of style, orchestral coloring, and harmonic interest, is distinctly superior to any of its contemporaries, except possibly Guillaume Tell. La Juive has all the characteristic devices of grand opera—big ensembles, processions and crowd scenes, ballets (which were staged at the first performances with unusual magnificence), and emotional tension. Among the many effects may be mentioned the use of a church style in the Te Deum of Act I (with organ accompaniment) and in the striking choral prayer of the last finale—examples of the common practice in Romantic opera of employing religious ceremony for sentimental or theatrical purposes. All the solo roles are expertly written to display the best qualities of the singers. The chief fault of this opera is its monotony of mood, owing to the succession of melodramatic situations almost unrelieved by lighter touches; the choruses and ballets, which offer variety in this respect, are musically among the weakest numbers. Halévy’s style in this and other operas was often criticized as too heavy and learned for the theater, but it has been admired and studied by musicians.
Meyerbeer
The composer who more than any other fixed the distinguishing traits of grand opera was Giacomo Meyerbeer.10 German by birth, he was a fellow pupil with C. M. von Weber of the famous organist and teacher Georg Joseph (“Abbé” or “Abt”) Vogler (1749–1814). Meyerbeer had written two German operas before going to Venice, at Salieri’s suggestion, for further study in 1815. There he soon mastered the Italian style of composition, at the time chiefly represented by Rossini, and had considerable success with a number of Italian operas, especially Il crociato in Egitto at Venice in 1824.11 But Paris was the goal of his ambition, a goal Rossini helped him achieve in 1826 when he produced Il crociato in Egitto at the Théâtre Italien. When in Paris to supervise the preparation of Il crociato for performance, Meyerbeer undertook a systematic study of French opera scores. In the process of assimilating this style, he achieved his own mature idiom in which German harmony, Italian melody, and French declamation were all represented. Meyerbeer’s first French opera, Robert le diable, was originally planned as an opéra comique in fulfillment of a commission from Pixérécourt, director of the Opéra-Comique. In the course of its creation, however, Meyerbeer transformed his conception of the Scribe libretto into a grand opera, and it was in this form that Robert le diable was presented at the Paris Opéra in 1831. It was a sensational triumph and an immediate international success. There followed, five years later, Les Huguenots, which is generally regarded as his masterpiece.12 His other two grand operas were Le Prophète (first performed at Paris, after many revisions, in 1849) and L’Africaine (Paris, 1865). Other notable works of Meyerbeer include two opéras comiques, L’Étoile du nord (1854) and Dinorah, oder der Wallfahrt nach Plöermel (first performed in 1859 under the title Le Pardon de Plöermel). The librettos of all except the last-named work were by Scribe.
Few composers in history have been subject to such diverse and strongly held judgments as Meyerbeer.13 The extraordinary fascination he exercised over several generations of opera audiences has led with the passage of time to a reaction, so that the very qualities that brought him success are those for which he is now most strongly condemned. Whatever opinion one may hold of Meyerbeer’s music, there can be no doubt that the operas he and Scribe wrote corresponded to the taste of the time and consequently are, at the very least, important documents for a phase of European culture of the nineteenth century. Robert le diable, for example, that jumble of medieval legends, romantic passions, grotesque superstitions, and fantastic confrontations, could hardly have been endured save by a generation nourished on the gothic novels of Mrs. Radcliffe and the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Historical subject matter in opera has always been transmuted to suit contemporary ideas; the perversions of history in Les Huguenots and Le Prophète—based respectively on the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 and the career of the Anabaptist fanatic John of Leyden (d. 1536)—are no worse than similar distortions in librettos of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and no less characteristic of their own period.
Meyerbeer’s music likewise must be judged in its historical context. He was an exceptionally gifted and versatile composer, one who as a dramatic craftsman has had few equals in the history of opera. A master of effect, he labored conscientiously to realize to the uttermost all the scenic and emotional possibilities of his librettos. Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in the church-related scenes (often staged simultaneously with secular scenes of a political or amorous nature).14 Magnificent scenery detailing a sixteenth-century cloister or the Münster cathedral becomes realistically enlivened with liturgically appropriate materials: a chorale or choral prière, an instrument (organ or harp) suggestive of sacred and celestial realms. He met dramatic needs with scenic spectacles, musical needs with tableaux.
Meyerbeer’s music is tuneful and highly competent technically, his rhythms vigorous, his harmony often original, his orchestration unusual, his choral writing massive but humanized, and his treatment of the solo voices uniformly brilliant. Moreover, his operas are not lacking in numbers that are beautiful, moving, and worthy of all respect: for example, in Robert le diable, the aria “Robert, toi que j’aime”; in Les Huguenots, the duet in Act IV (particularly the portion from the words “Tu m’aimes?” to the final stretto) and the scena and trio in Act V; in Le Prophète, the famous aria “Ah! mon fils”; and in L’Africaine, the entire finale of Act II.
(FROM OLIVE LOGAN, “THE SECRET REGIONS OF THE STAGE,” IN HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE [APRIL 1874], 635)
Nevertheless, Meyerbeer’s work is uneven. Numbers like those just mentioned will be found side by side with tunes that can only be described as trivial, no matter how well covered by orchestral color and stage action. Moreover, change in fashion, that nemesis of all opera, has been particularly hard on Meyerbeer. The very length of the scores, the irrelevant ballets and spectacular scenes, the repetitions, the monotony of phrase structure, the overworked device of the sequence, unmotivated coloratura passages, languishing cadenzas—in short, all those features that were practically obligatory in an opera of this period—risked becoming outmoded gestures, stale through familiarity. Meyerbeer’s last work, L’Africaine, evidences a more sober and more consistent musical style, even though its composition extended over a period of twenty years15—a style purged of many of the earlier excesses, rich in melodic beauties, and containing some interesting harmonic refinements (example 18.2). Its musical exoticism was not without influence on Verdi when he undertook the composition of Aida five years later.
Meyerbeer was primarily a composer for the theater, interested equally in music, scenery, stage management, and choreography; his aim was to present theatrically effective scenes and he never proposed—as Wagner later did—to undertake a fundamental reformation of opera.16 The high reputation he enjoyed and his long-continued influence on the opera everywhere were not due merely to two or three ephemeral successes in the 1830s.17 It has been well said that “Meyerbeer’s faults remained in his own works; his virtues were transmitted to his successors.”18 His harmony and especially his treatment of the orchestra influenced many later composers.19 The ideal of grand opera, which he did more than anyone else to embody in concrete form, is evident in Verdi’s Vêpres siciliennes, Don Carlos, and Aida, as well as in numberless other operas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of Meyerbeer’s most notable, if ungrateful, disciples was Wagner, whose Rienzi (1842), originally designed for Paris audiences but first staged in Dresden, frankly aimed to surpass Meyerbeer and Scribe on their own ground. All the familiar dramatic and scenic apparatus of grand opera was employed in Wagner’s libretto, and the music, with its tunes so often repeated, its monotony of phraseology, its massive choruses and ensembles, and its generally huge proportions, is startlingly like Meyerbeer’s.20 Thus Wagner, like Gluck, began his career by demonstrating his mastery of a style of which he later became the most vociferous opponent.
EXAMPLE 18.2 L’Africaine, Act II, finale
Berlioz
Although he cannot be regarded as in any sense a follower of Meyerbeer, the contributions of Hector Berlioz (1803–69) to opera may be considered here, since his chief work, Les Troyens (composed 1856–58), is in form a grand opera and in content and spirit a worthy successor to the musical dramas of Gluck and the Romantic operas of Le Sueur.21 Berlioz wrote only a few other operatic works. Of the surviving opera scores, only three are complete, the first of which is Benvenuto Cellini (Paris, 1838). It is based upon a libretto by Leon de Wailly and Auguste Barbier that is centered on the life of the sixteenth-century sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and the casting of his famous statue Perseus. The general plan of the libretto is a chain of broadly conceived episodes rather than a plot developed in full detail. In form, therefore, it is somewhat like Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and the treatment of the crowd scenes foreshadows both that work and Wagner’s Meistersinger. Although originally designed as an opéra comique, Berlioz had to redesign the score for a production at the Opéra, since spoken dialogue was not permitted in that theater. Initial productions of Benvenuto Cellini did not succeed (in part because the score requires resources that were not readily available in the conventional theaters), but the opera continues to be known through performances of both the overture, one of Berlioz’s best short instrumental pieces, and the “Roman Carnival” extracted from the finale of Act II.
Beatrice et Benedict (1862), a two-act opéra comique, was Berlioz’s last opera. Based upon Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, the opera is in many places lyrical, almost melancholy in mood; it is full of the most exquisite detail, though perhaps too fine in its workmanship for the demands of the theater.22 La Damnation de Faust (1846), based on Goethe’s drama, is sometimes given as an opera, though it is perhaps better classified as a symphonic drama. As in Cellini, here also Berlioz sets to music only those scenes that he regards as most suitable for musical treatment, omitting unessential connecting episodes. In this music, Berlioz’s fantastic imagination and orchestral virtuosity are at their height, and it is these things rather than any specifically operatic qualities that have made Faust one of his best-known works.
The libretto of Les Troyens, after the second and fourth books of Virgil’s Aeneid, is by Berlioz himself and represents some of the best French operatic verse of the nineteenth century.23 Part I, comprising the first two acts, is entitled La Prise de Troie (The Capture of Troy) and Part II, comprising the last three acts, Les Troyens à Carthage. Part II was performed twenty-one times at Paris in 1863; Part I did not see the stage until 1890, at Karlsruhe.24 A number of revivals, some complete but most in partial or shortened versions, have occurred since 1920. Seldom has this masterpiece been accorded the performance honors it deserves. Exceptions include the 1969 full performance at Covent Garden, the gala opening of the 1983 centennial season of the Metropolitan Opera, and a highly acclaimed recent production by this same opera company.
Les Troyens is quite possibly the most important French opera of the nineteenth century, the Latin counterpart of Wagner’s Teutonic Ring. Its strange fate is paralleled by nothing in the history of music unless it be the century-long neglect of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew. One can account for this in the case of Berlioz’s opera: it is long; it is extremely expensive to stage; and its musical idiom is so original, so different from the conventional operatic style, that managers (no doubt with reason) have been unwilling to take the redoubtable financial risks involved in mounting it. In the past, there was no overwhelming public for Berlioz as there was for Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini, and not even all connoisseurs were agreed about Les Troyens.25 But, public or no public, the work ought to be produced regularly until conductors, singers, and audiences are brought to realize its greatness.
The full score of Les Troyens was not even published in authentic form until 1969,26 a serious matter in the case of a composer like Berlioz, whose music is conceived in terms of specific instruments and of whom it may be said, as of Delacroix, that “the color creates the design.” A piano-vocal reduction made by Berlioz himself is full of most pathetic suggestions as to how scenes might be cut and the cost of staging and the performance time reduced. How deeply the failure of the work affected him may be seen from those words in his foreword: “O ma noble Cassandre, moi heroïque vierge, il faut donc me résigner, je ne t’entendrai jamais!” (O my noble Cassandra [the heroine of Part I], my heroic virgin, I must then be resigned, I shall never hear thee!)
In form, Les Troyens is a “number” opera, superimposed on a tripartite dramatic structure, with many large choral and ballet scenes.27 With these features its resemblance to the typical grand opera ends. Its plot revolves not around individuals’ fates but around great historic-legendary motifs: the fall of Troy, the flight of Aeneas, the sojourn at Carthage, the departure of the Trojans for Italy, and the death of Dido. The individuals appear as agents in a cosmic drama, not as persons concerned only with dramatizing their own woes and posturing before a picturesque historical background. If persons attending opera productions are not accustomed to associate dramatic emotion with impersonal issues, they may be prone to regard a work like Les Troyens as an epic (that is, a long and boring narrative relieved by occasional spectacular interludes), especially if they have never been given the opportunity of realizing that here is the one opera of the nineteenth century in which the epic has been successfully dramatized.28 So strong is this suprapersonal, antique character that the appearances of the god Mercury at the end of Act IV and of the specters of Priam, Hector, and other Trojan warriors in Act V actually seem natural and convincing.
Berlioz’s melodic line is in the best French tradition of utter fidelity to the text. It contains not a trace of Italian operatic opulence; nothing is brought out merely to gratify the singer or tickle the ear of the listener. The rhythmic patterns are novel, subtle, and extraordinarily varied. Most notable in Les Troyens is the quality of classic restraint, that purification and concentration of style characteristic of the maturity of genius (example 18.3). The harmony occasionally drops into the commonplace (there is unquestionably too much reliance on the chord of the diminished seventh, for example); one remarkable feature is the almost total absence of suspensions and appoggiaturas, making an extreme contrast with the characteristic later Wagnerian style. The chromaticism is much more restrained than in Berlioz’s earlier works. There are occasional dull passages, though certainly no more in proportion to the whole than in Wagner. Yet these are surely redeemed by such places as the lament of Cassandra (Act I), the March of the Trojans (Act III, and recurring at various times), the choruses “Dieux de la ville éternelle” (Act I) and “Gloire, gloire à Didon” (Act III), the song of the sailor (Act V, scene i), and the magnificent final scene of Dido’s immolation—all music that can hardly be excelled in beauty by any other score of the nineteenth century.
The principal interlude is the scene of the hunt (Act IV), a complete symphonic poem in Berlioz’s most brilliant orchestral style, accompanied by a fantastic pantomime on the stage with wordless vocalizing calls and distant cries of “Italie!” This “Italie!” is a recurring motif of the drama, the command of the gods to Aeneas to lead his Trojan warriors to Italy and there found the empire destined to rule the world.
Comparison of Berlioz and Wagner is inevitable and leaps to the mind again and again when studying the score of Les Troyens. It is well to remember that Tristan had not yet been heard when Berlioz wrote the marvelously delicate and sensuous love music at the end of Act IV: the septet and chorus “Tout n’est que paix et charme” and the duet “Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie!” the dialogue form of which is imitated from Act V, scene i, of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The change from G-flat to D at the entrance of Mercury, who strikes Aeneas’s shield and utters the solemn warning word Italie! and the final dark, unexpected cadence in the remote key of E minor make an effect absolutely unparalleled in tragic power.
EXAMPLE 18.3 Les Troyens, Act V
In view of the current conception of Berlioz (based on his earlier works and autobiographical writings) as an irrational extremist, a composer who “believed in neither God nor Bach,”29 it should be pointed out that he never ceased to emphasize the independence of music from literary associations and expressed the hope that his Symphonie fantastique would “on its own merits and irrespective of any dramatic aim, offer interest in the musical sense alone.” He was no Wagnerian. He cared for none of Wagner’s music later than Lohengrin, found the Tristan prelude incomprehensible, and had only the vaguest notion of Wagner’s musico-dramatic theories. He wrote, after outlining what he thought were the doctrines of the “music of the future”: “If such is this new religion, I am far from being a devotee; I have never been, I am not, I never shall be. I raise my hand, and I swear: ‘non credo.’”30
David
Berlioz, however, did seem to be a devotee of the communal utopia advocated by Saint-Simon and his followers, a form of socialism that affirmed the value of the arts in creating an ideal society. A prominent member of the Saint-Simonism movement who composed music for the communal rites was Félicien David (1810–76), one of the earliest orientalists in French nineteenth-century music.31 David’s missionary activities led him to Eastern countries, where he came into contact with the indigenous music of the regions visited. Works written after his return to Paris show this Eastern influence, beginning with the symphonic ode Le Désert, which caused a sensation at its premiere in 1844. His opera La Perle du Brésil (1851) has many points of resemblance to Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine; another opera, Herculanum (1859), won a state prize in 1867. But David’s most successful stage work was his two-act opéra comique Lalla-Roukh (1862), which held the stage in Paris until the end of the century and even received some performances outside France. David’s orientalism was an early example of those exotic tendencies in French Romanticism that were to become more prominent in opera of the seventies and eighties.
1. The Paris Opéra was known in this period as the Académie Royale de Musique, a company housed at the Salle Le Peletier from 1821 to 1875. The theater had a seating capacity of approximately 1,800 people. See The New Grove Dictionary (1980), 14:210, figure 18, and also Pendle, Eugène Scribe, 27.
2. Crosten, French Grand Opera; Lang, “Grand Opera,” in his Music in Western Civilization, 825–34; Abry, Histoire illustrée de la littérature française; Smith, The Tenth Muse, chap. 14; Pendle, Eugène Scribe (containing an extensive bibliography); Lang, The Experience of Opera, chap 11; Perris, “French Music in the Time of Louis-Philippe.”
3. Wagners phrase; see his Opera and Drama, part 1, chap. 6.
4. See Pendle, Eugène Scribe; Longyear, “Political and Social Criticism in French Opera, 1827–1920”; W. Weber, Music and the Middle Class.
5. See Malherbe, Auber: Biographie critique; Longyear, “D. F. E. Auber: … Opéra Comique, 1800–1878”
6. The mute as a central character is not, however, unique to La Muette; earlier works by Pixérécourt and Weber have similar roles. Stefano Pavesi’s Fenella (1831) is also based on the story of La Muette with the mute as the central character (see chapter twenty). Scribe, in his position as scenarist for the ballet at the Opéra, was well versed in the use of mimed action. See Pendle, Eugène Scribe, and Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris.
7. See Moutoz, Rossini et son Guillaume Tell; Pendle, Eugène Scribe; Osborne, Rossini.
8. For a discussion of his other operas, see chapters nineteen and twenty.
9. See Halévy, Souvenirs et portraits; idem, Derniers Souvenirs et portraits; Curtiss, “Fromental Halévy.”
10. See Kapp, Meyerbeer; Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher; Heine, Sämtliche Werke, 8:99–116; Becker, Der Fall Heine-Meyerbeer; idem, Giacomo Meyerbeer; Frese, Dramaturgie der grossen Opern; Gibson, “The Ensemble Technique”; Fulcher, “Meyerbeer and the Music of Society.”
11. This was one of the last major operas to require a castrato.
12. For a discussion of Act II, see Grout and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 4th ed., 727.
13. See some examples in the introduction by Becker to Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel, 23–24.
14. He also used simultaneous staging of indoor and outdoor scenes.
15. The opera was begun in 1837 but not produced until after the composer’s death. Revisions of the score were made by Fétis, at which time almost two dozen pieces by Meyerbeer were eliminated.
16. See the introduction by Becker to Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel, 25.
17. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Meyerbeer’s operas have been performed in many different countries with repeated success, such as that of Le Prophète at the Metropolitan Opera in 1977.
18. Dauriac, Meyerbeer, 182.
19. Lavoix, Histoire de l’instrumentation, 384–416, especially 402ff.
20. Wagner brought his score of Rienzi to Meyerbeer for criticism. See Deathridge, Wagner’s Rienzi: A Reappraisal Based on the Study of the Sketches and Drafts.
21. The tempestuous life and opinions of Berlioz can best be followed in his own Mémoires, supplemented by his letters and other writings. See also studies by Crabbe, Primmer, Holoman, Boschot, Barzun, among others.
22. See especially the duet “Vois soupirez, Madame” (Act I) and Beatrice’s recitative and aria “Dieu! Que viens-je d’entendre?” (Act II).
23. Smith, The Tenth Muse, 307.
24. Berlioz completed the libretto and full score in 1858. After waiting five years for the Paris Opéra to stage the work, which it failed to do, Berlioz allowed the opera to be performed at the Théâtre Lyrique, but because of its excessive length only Acts III–V were staged, with a new prelude.
25. For example, Grout relates the following comment about Les Troyens: “I [Grout] shall never forget my astonishment at hearing Vaughan Williams describe Les Troyens as ‘the second most boring opera in the world.’ Of course, I immediately asked him which was the first.” See also Lang, Music in Western Civilization, 850–51; Cohen, “Berlioz and the Opera.”
26. It is vol. 2 in the New Berlioz Edition (Kassel, 1967–), ed. by H.J. MacDonald et al. The one hundred-year-old history of the various versions of Les Troyens that were performed prior to 1969 is documented in L. Goldberg, “Les Troyens of Hector Berlioz: A Century of Productions and Reviews.”
27. See L. Goldberg, Aspects of Dramatic and Musical Unity in Berlioz’s Les Troyens.
28. Wagner’s music dramas are not epics, but myths. The only comparable works are to be found in the twentieth century. See, for example, Milhaud’s Christophe Colomb.
29. F. Hiller, cited in Berlioz, Mémoires, 103.
30. Berlioz, A Travers Chants (1872), 315.
31. See Gradenwitz, “Félicien David”; Hagen, Félicien David, 1810–1876: A Composer and a Cause.